The Ruby Notebook (7 page)

“W
endell!” I say suddenly.

“What about him?” Layla asks, sipping her third espresso.

“I haven’t e-mailed him yet today!” Usually, it’s one of the first things I do in the morning. And now the sun’s overhead, which means it’s already noon. Layla and I must have been idling here at the café for a couple of hours now. I have no excuse for forgetting about my boyfriend. I drop some coins by my empty espresso cup, say goodbye to Layla, and hurry toward Nirvana.

As I enter the dim room, the bells jingling, Ahmed glances up from the computer. “Oh, I’m glad you’re all right, Zeeta.” He sips his sweating can of Coke with a bendy straw. “You’re
normally here much earlier. What will the love of your life think?”

I give a friendly shrug, then settle into my chair, which reeks of old cigarette smoke. Three e-mails from Wendell. I skim them. He’s obviously trying to smooth things over, keeping his responses to my questions light and sweet. His hair is four to four and a half inches longer, depending which side you measure, due to a crooked trim at Econo-Hair. He’s cut back to a half-tin of Altoids per week, down from a full tin during final exams.

And then, to my amazement, in the third e-mail, he tells me about a vision. Maybe as a peace offering. I slow down and read more carefully.

I send him a short reply.
Well, let’s hope the girl’s me
.
I stick a smiley face in so he won’t think I’m jealous or mad. Then I write,
And by the way, my style changes from country to country. You’ve only known the Ecuador Zeeta.
After I reread it, I toss in another smiley face for good measure. I
end with,
Can’t wait for you to come!!! Love you!!!
with an excess of exclamation points to drive home the point that I’m not holding a grudge.

Next I answer a dozen other e-mails, IM for a while with an old friend in Brazil, e-mail some little girlfriends in Ecuador, then Google Illusion. They have a pretty basic Web site, just photos and tour dates and a blog that hasn’t been updated for three months. I sign up for their newsletter, then plug in earphones and listen to a few songs.

Suddenly, I realize I have nothing to wear to the party tonight. Nothing dazzling, that is. Illusion’s sparkling outfits make my own clothes—mostly from markets in Ecuador and Thailand—seem dull and rustic.

I log out, jump up to pay Ahmed, and dash next door to the secondhand shop. It’s musty and dark inside, with low French reggae playing. I shuffle through the racks, not sure what I’m looking for, until my hands rest on a soft red dress, an airy blend of cotton and silk. It looks about my size, although I’m not sure how sizes work in France yet. When I try it on behind a thick velvet curtain, it fits me perfectly, close enough that it skims my curves, loose enough that it won’t suffocate me in this heat. It’s held up by slim spaghetti straps, and seems to float around my body. It stops midthigh, which is shorter than most of my dresses, but it’s liberating to have my knees uncovered.

It’s not until I’m standing in front of the mirror that I remember Wendell’s wet dress vision.

Not your style
.

Whatever my style is at this moment, this dress seems to fit it. The French Zeeta.
La Zeeta Française
. I press the fabric to my face. It smells like roses, maybe the perfume of whoever owned it before me.

At the cash register, my stomach tightens, as it always does when I make a rare frivolous purchase. Our checking account has been nearly wiped out after the deposit on our apartment and a week’s worth of groceries. And Layla’s first paycheck will go to next month’s rent. I’ll have to start tutoring right away. Last year, I made Layla swear that we’d put away money for savings, and now I’m the one breaking the promise.

I take a deep breath and lay fifteen euros on the table, our food budget for the day.

Outside, I lean against a wall and make a few quick signs in my notebook.
ENGLISH TUTORING by a Fluent Speaker with Six Years of Tutoring Experience
. I tear out the pages, tuck the flyers beneath my arm, and head toward the university to hang up the first batch.

When I’m inside the university’s main foyer, by the bulletin board, I reach into my bag to pull out the flyers. My fingers graze something small and smooth and cylindrical. A little jar of lip gloss or face cream? I don’t remember putting anything like that in my bag. I pull it out, curious.

It’s a small jar that fits perfectly into my palm, made of clear glass, worn and scratched. Sand is inside. And on a
white sticker label is written,
That night meant the world to me
. It’s the same compact scrawl as the writing on the CD.

I glance around, scanning the faces of tourists and locals streaming by. Nothing unusual. No one paying any attention to me. Someone must have put this in my bag while I was on the square. It was crowded enough that it could have been done inconspicuously. I review where I’ve been. It couldn’t have happened in Nirvana—that place was empty except for me and Ahmed. Maybe at the secondhand shop while I was looking at dresses. But it wasn’t crowded in there. I would have noticed.

As I walk home, turning the possibilities over in my mind, I suddenly stop in my tracks.
That night meant the world to me
.

The
fantôme
must already know me.

“Look, Layla,” I say, pulling out the jar of sand and setting it on the café table. “My
fantôme
slipped this in my bag.” I rest my bag on an empty chair, tempting him to leave something else but keeping a close eye on it, in hopes of catching him in the act.

Layla shields her eyes from the glaring sunlight and reads the note, then gazes at the jar in her palm. “Undeniably romantic!” she announces. “I told you he was smitten, Z. Any ideas who it is yet?”

“Well, it’s obviously someone I’ve met before. And spent time with.” I pause, contemplating the grains of sand. “Or the
fantôme
could be mistaking me for someone else.”

“True,” Layla admits, twirling her finger around a lock of hair. “But what if it really is someone from your past, Zeeta?”

I make a face and say, “I haven’t exactly had many unforgettably romantic nights, Layla.” Then, flushing slightly, I add, “Except with Wendell.”

Layla’s eyes twinkle. “The universe will reveal its secrets with time, love. In the meantime, enjoy the mystery!”

I keep staring at the sand, as if it holds answers. “The sand must be a clue. Maybe it’s from one of the beaches we’ve lived near.”

“Thailand?” Layla says, lighting up. “Oh, wait! There was that cute French boy you met in Brazil. What was his name?”

“Olivier.” His name gives me a little jab of pain. My first fling. He was on vacation in Brazil, where Layla and I lived three countries ago. Olivier and I surfed together, took some hand-in-sweaty-hand walks on the beach at night. But then he went back to France and after a few months stopped answering my e-mails. “He was the one who ended things with me,” I remind Layla. “It can’t be him.”

“Oh, but maybe that’s why he isn’t showing himself. He’s ashamed. Regretful! Karma has brought you together again. Now he can find redemption.”

I shake my head, remembering how Olivier broke my heart, how I lay on the beach for hours on end blasting our music in earphones and crying. Of course, I always imagined he had some reasonable excuse for not e-mailing: A virus infected his computer and erased my e-mail address. His
house burned down and his family was barely surviving on the streets. And the best, he was murdered.

“I don’t know, Layla,” I say. It’s way too messy to think about Wendell and Olivier being here in the same town. I look over her shoulder, toward the fountain, where the pigeon man has reappeared and is scattering more birdseed. “Listen, I’m going to ask that old guy with the pigeons if he’s seen my
fantôme
.”

Layla kisses each cheek, adopting the Provençal style. “
Bon courage
, Z!”

I grab my bag and hand her a bunch of flyers. “Can you hang some of these up?”

“With joy,” she says, tucking them under her arm. I hear her voice calling after me, “Make your day a song!”

Holding the jar of sand, I walk across the expanse of stones, toward the flock of pigeons. This man looks like a pigeon himself, dressed in shades of silver. Around his neck a green-purple iridescent scarf mimicks the colors of a pigeon’s neck. He walks like a pigeon, wobbling along, jutting his head forward. Even his potbelly echoes the roundness of a pigeon’s midsection.

The main difference between him and the pigeons—apart from belonging to different species—is his gray beret. He’s the only person I’ve seen in this supposedly beret-adorned country actually wearing a beret. He climbs onto the edge of the fountain and, standing there, reaches out a tin cup, fills it with water, then takes a long sip. He even drinks from the
fountain like a pigeon. It’s strange to see him perched up there, the blue sky behind him, a mysterious smile in his eyes, the breeze carrying a few stray feathers from his shirt. The children around him are chasing the pigeons as they hop and flutter a few feet away. The man seems amused and hands the kids some birdseed to toss. Catching my eye, he waves to me, then climbs slowly down.

I walk up the low steps. Up close, his face looks jaunty. His pink-tipped nose and rosy cheeks make me think of Santa Claus minus the beard. Water drips from the points of his white mustache.

I sit down beside him and open my notebook. “
Bonjour, monsieur
. I’m Zeeta.”

His cheeks form little balls when he smiles. “I’m Vincent.”

“
Enchantée,
” I say. “I like your pigeons.”

“
Merci, mademoiselle.
” He looks pleased. “If only everyone felt the same way as you.” He clucks. “The city put those pins on the stone heads over the doors so my dear pigeons can’t rest there.” He leans forward conspiratorially. “But I think those old heads look better with a bit of pigeon
merde
on them, don’t you?” He gives a hearty laugh.